Too Nice

Abby is a teenager whose mum died when she was two. This has left her with very few of her own memories of her mother. What she knows of her mother, she has gleaned from stories told by her dad with whom she is close. When dad gets a new girlfriend, Jen, the librarian at the school where he teaches and Abby is a pupil, Abby rationally knows she should be pleased, polite and sensible as she is mostly. After all, dad is entitled to a relationship, and she wants him to be happy. But then Jen moves in with Abby and her dad. So, what will happen now?

Nicholls, in this short novel, deftly explores the emotions a child feels in adjusting to a new family member. Anyone who has experienced this adjustment will feel deeply for Abby. Cleverly though, Nicholls has not made Jen, the traditional villain, and the reasons for the way Jen acts are also explained. Written for Barrington Stoke, Too Nice focuses solely on family dynamics and there are no subplots.